New To The Side Hustle? Prepare To Make These 5 Sacrifices

Ryan Robinson
, ContributorI write about the creative ways millennials are making money.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Matt Nelson, the 20-year-old the creator of WeRateDogs, turned a fun social media side hustle into a business that generates over $10,000 per month.

Now pushing well over 3 million followers on his Twitter account that gives cute dog pictures a witty caption and rating on a scale that always climbs above the traditional one to ten, Nelson’s built a highly engaged community around this side project.

Among the many insights and experiences Nelson shared with me, some of the most interesting were surrounding the sacrifices he’s had to make in order to turn WeRateDogs into the successful business it’s become—while still finding time to juggle his coursework and an internship.

As Nelson and others have learned, when you’re willing to make a few necessary sacrifices for your side hustle, what you gain will ultimately be far more valuable than what you’re giving up. With that in mind, here are five sacrifices you’ll need to make to turn your side hustle into a success:

Time

Time is naturally the first sacrifice that comes to mind regarding what’s required to make your side hustle work. For Nelson, his time gets allocated to spending several hours a day managing his Twitter account, finding the right pictures and engaging with his community.

“If I don’t dedicate this much time to scrolling and engaging and paying attention to audience feedback, I’m doing myself a disservice,” Nelson shares. “In the last 7 days I spent 16 hours on Twitter. That’s ridiculous, but that’s the sacrifice I’ve made.”

You may not depend on Twitter for the success of your side hustle, but giving up on those nightly Netflix binges or waking up early to invest extra hours into scaling your business will be essential if you want to make meaningful progress.

Future Plans

To be clear, getting into a side hustle doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly relinquish control over your future. However, it almost certainly means you’ll be giving up on some of your original long-term plans. During our interview, Nelson mentioned no longer being sure what his educational future entails.

After all, with a side hustle that’s turned into a growing (and monetized) social media brand, a change of plans might be in order. You’ll likely need to make the same considerations as your own side hustle grows from a hobby into a full on business. Learning to adapt your future plans so that you can accommodate your growing side hustle should be a central part of your mindset.

Ego

As nice as it would be to launch a successful side hustle on your own, this is almost never the case. As Nelson noted in our interview, his early Twitter growth came from, “bigger people in the community” who’d retweet his content. By leveraging the help of others who’ve already built powerful brands, he was able to accelerate his own growth. The same is true of any side hustle. Christina El Moussa, co-star of HGTV’s “Flip or Flop” and co-founder of SuccessPath, notes that these mentor relationships can make all the difference for those just starting out with their side hustle:

“We started doing home flipping seminars because we wanted others to avoid the mistakes we made early in our careers,” El Moussa shares. “Getting help from someone with experience makes it so much easier to avoid the things that could stop your side hustle before you really get started.”